


Hymns at Heaven's Gate

by twtd



Series: Look Into Your Own Heart [1]
Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 07:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16154585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twtd/pseuds/twtd
Summary: Things between Hecate and Pippa have changed. Hecate thinks about those changes.***Hecate doesn't know how it starts. She doesn't know when things shifted. She can't remember how things were before. She just knows that everything is different now.





	Hymns at Heaven's Gate

**Author's Note:**

> I've been feeling weird about my writing lately and this is how that's manifested. It's nothing like anything I've been writing lately. It's mainly just Hecate alone with her thoughts.

Hecate doesn't know how it starts. She doesn't know when things shifted. She can't remember how things were before. She just knows that everything is different now. She looks at Pippa and no longer sees the girl who was her best friend or even the woman tiptoeing her way back into her life. She looks at Pippa and sees things that have never been there before, not until recently, maybe just the last few months. How long does it take to fall in love with someone? Where's the tipping point? Can Hecate remember the before and after, the moment she went from loving her best friend to being in love with her? And does Pippa know? 

Hecate suspects that she might, suspects that there is an ulterior motive behind the increasingly frequent maglet messages and mirror calls. Hecate knows for a fact that she and Pippa never held hands the way they are holding them now, not as teenagers, not even as children, no matter how much Pippa insists otherwise. She would have remembered the press of her own dry skin against the smoothness of Pippa's. Palmistry has never been one of her interests, but maybe, she thinks, there's something there in the way the bumps and grooves of her lifeline aligns with Pippa's. It's a silly thought. She may as well try to find the name of her beloved in tea leaves as Pippa had insisted they do as girls. Hecate had never seen anything, not even a hint. She hadn't had the imagination for it, or perhaps part of her knew even then that she was destined to end up alone. 

Except she isn't alone. She has her girls, scores and scores of them over the years, and she has Ada, and now she has Pippa once again. Pippa and her confounding ulterior motives. If only Pippa would tell her what she wants, where they're going. Hecate sighs and uses her free hand to rub her forehead. She supposes Pippa could voice the same complaints about her. The reasoning behind her own behavior is probably equally opaque. She has, after all, responded to each of Pippa's maglet messages with alacrity, jumped to answer her mirror calls even on nights when she would ignore a message from the Great Wizard himself. But Pippa cannot possibly know that. 

"Are you feeling alright?" Pippa asks her and it pulls Hecate from her thoughts. Such introspection is best carried out alone, not while standing in the presence of the focus of your thoughts. Pippa squeezes Hecate's hand where it rests in hers and looks up at her in concern. "If you've a headache…"

"No, I'm fine," Hecate says, waving away Pippa's concern as she starts walking down the path again. Pippa falls into step beside her. 

"A penny for your thoughts?" Pippa asks. 

"They aren't worth even that," Hecate responds. "I'm merely thinking about how lovely the weather is. I understand now why you were so insistent about this walk."

"Oh." Pippa seems to deflate a little. "Is that all?"

"I told you my thoughts weren't worth much." Hecate deflects. She looks down at their joined hands. 

"Your thoughts are worth something to me," Pippa says as she squeezes Hecate's hand again. "I wish, well, I wish you felt comfortable enough with me to actually share them." 

Pippa sounds more forlorn than Hecate has heard since they first reconciled and Pippa had pleaded to know what had changed between them. Like then, Hecate wants to take Pippa into her arms to comfort her, but without Pippa instigating it, she lacks the necessary courage. 

They come to a bench and Hecate disentangles her hand from Pippa's as she sits. After a moment, Pippa sits next to her. Their hands find each other again. Hecate thinks of the nature of magnets, about how they seem so much like magic but obey ordinary laws of physics, laws that apply to the magical and non-magical alike. If she had no magic, if the Founding Stone had taken its due from her and not Miss Mould, would this attraction between her and Pippa still exist? If she became Ordinary, would this force keep pushing them together? Does she look for the answer in a spell science textbook or in the realm of physics? She thinks she knows the answer and it frightens her. Pippa would be there no matter what, magic or not. 

Pippa loves her. She can say that with certainty. But Pippa loves freely. Or at least she used to. She never merely liked a song or a spell or a person, she loved them. It was her baseline. Yet now, Hecate has noticed that Pippa is somewhat more reserved in her affection. Hecate's fault, she assumes, though maybe that's egotistical, to think that her leaving caused such a fundamental change in Pippa's personality. Perhaps it is merely living in a less than perfect world for nearly 50 years that has done it. Hecate certainly has her own scars that have nothing to do with Pippa.

Hecate knows she had fallen silent again and that she will need a better answer than the weather ready for when Pippa inevitably asks her what she's thinking. How can she put her thoughts into words though?

With little premeditation, Hecate's lifts Pippa's fingers to her lips and presses the lightest kiss to the back of Pippa's knuckles. The gesture is tender rather than seductive. Pippa sucks in a breath.

"I'm sorry that you have to be so patient with me," Hecate says as she looks over Pippa's shoulder and toward the entrance to the garden. 

Pippa reaches up, and with an equally light touch to Hecate's chin, turns Hecate's face toward her. Hecate meets her eyes, looks away, then looks back again. It's the least she can do. "One day you'll be brave enough," Pippa says as she searches Hecate's face. Hecate hopes that she's right. "I'm willing to wait. For a time, I'm willing to wait."

Hecate wants to lean in then and press her lips to Pippa's. She knows now that the touch will be welcomed, but she can't. Her spine is still too rigid; her hair is still too tight; her soul is still too frightened. Her heart beats like a rabbit's: thumpthumpthumpthumpthump. Pippa is too close. She can smell her perfume. It reminds her of dew at daybreak and only Pippa's presence inspires such thoughts. 

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,  
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,  
Like to the lark at break of day arising,  
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate. 

She doesn't know why she remembers it. She doesn't remember the rest of the sonnet or know which number it is. She just has the fragment. She has never in her life thought of comparing herself to a lark. She is neither fun nor frivolous nor has she ever been. Too dour. Too serious. That was always how she was described. Pippa was the carefree one. But Pippa does not look carefree now. She looks concerned but understanding. 

Hecate pulls away from Pippa's hand where it still rests against her face, her movements still gentle. She isn't running so much as she is slowly backing away, leaving herself room to return someday soon. She will not make Pippa wait another 30 years. It would be unfair to both of them. It is unfair to make her wait now. Hecate lets some of the tension release from her posture. 

"I am thinking about larks."

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is curious, Hecate is thinking of Sonnet 29.
> 
> I'm feeling really uncertain about this, so comments/suggestions both good and bad would be appreciated. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at twtd11 and twitter at twtd.


End file.
